


All Fourteen Exist, but not Me

by Tea_is_Not_Them



Series: He Never Existed Saga [3]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Canon Levels of Jon being self depricating, Gen, Identity Issues, Monster Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 10:27:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29823534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tea_is_Not_Them/pseuds/Tea_is_Not_Them
Summary: Like the Not Them stole Sasha, the Archivist stole Jon.
Relationships: Past Jonathan Sims/Martin Blackwood
Series: He Never Existed Saga [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2188941
Comments: 18
Kudos: 49





	All Fourteen Exist, but not Me

**Author's Note:**

> to Authora1604 on tumblr, thank you for this idea!! I hope I did it justice :3

It starts, as most things do, with Jane Prentiss. It had started long before that, and long after it as well. Jon can’t say, he was bad with time, after the end of the world. And yet he was here. The Archivist knew that he could not stop people from noticing, but he had been doing a good job. Maybe it was the influence of the stranger that made him so easy to look over. He showed up to work one day, and the old Jon died, then the Archivist began. 

  
  


Like the Not Them stole Sasha, the Archivist stole Jon.

  
  


If he could feel guilt for killing himself, he wondered what it would feel like. The Archivist hums though, and goes about his days as normally as he could. He did not need to eat, but he went to the grocery store to buy little things, not enough to harm his now atrophied stomach, if he even had one anymore, but some sweets, something small. Smalls things were enjoyable, chocolate was a luxury that he felt a bit bad about enjoying. 

  
  


But he does not think about it often, his mind is on other things.

  
  


Even though his body does not work correctly, whatever handle on the flesh Jon had, had helped him not look like a corpse, like eyes and bugs and dirt and the entirety of fear, a husk kept together by plastic and wax. Nothing human anymore, not after the lives he destroyed and remade anew. He wondered what to do to keep the world safe, b ut all he knew, was this is the only way.

  
  


It was hard to feed 14 fears as one person, but good for the Archivist that he was not a person anymore. 

  
  


\-------

  
  


Tim knew Jon for a long time, but when he first saw the man in the Archives, it was like Jon was a different person. He smiled at them sadly, as if he had wronged them, and while Sasha had felt a little annoyed that someone else got the position, it seemed deeper than that. When he looked at them his eyes seemed to be a bit far away now. Something lost and sad. 

  
  


They also knew that he had this weird thing about not knocking. About looking oer his statements before reading, about what statements they could follow-up. 

  
  


It was when Jane Prentiss had sieged Martin’s flat that they seemed to realize how strange the situation was. Jon took the statement, and offered the cot in Document Storage to Martin, and then offered to get the Institute’s card to get him a hotel for a while until his lease ends, if Martin did not want to stay in the institute. It was alarming to see Jon be gentle with people, something he had seemed to do a lot now that he was Head Archivist. 

  
  


Martin didn’t want to bring the worms upon an innocent motel, and the trip wouldn’t work anyway. 

  
  


When hell broke loose in the Archives, worms squirming around, Jon didn’t flinch. He looked and herded the others away, into the storage room, and then ran through the archives. Jon set off the fire alarm faster than any man should, and when he cam back he noticed that none of the assistants could see him. But he could see Jane knocking at walls, close to tearing them down.

  
  


Panic struck the Archivist, the only emotion he had felt other than sadness and hunger, and then a glow of something beneath his skin grew.

  
  


Sasha, Tim, and Martin watched from the corners of Document Storage, through the window. As their boss began to speak loud and clear. 

  
  


“Jane Prentiss, that which crawls and rots, a home to worms and parasite to the world.” He called, voice like a flooding river crashing into a dam. 

  
  


The worm woman turned, and they saw that Jon’s skin had begun to change. Eyes opened in places they should not, something squirmed under his skin, dirt chipped off his flesh in clumps, blood leaked from his eyes, his hands were skeletal now, bones held together by the terror of Jane Prentiss. Wax melted around his mouth, a buzzing noise came behind the words, static. 

  
  


Sasha gasped, as the words continued, as salt water and fog poured from Jon’s mouth, “You have been good to your flock, but you have trepassed on that which you should never have. There is more in the world than you could know- you are just a fleck compared to all the terror that reaps from your bones. Ceaseless Watcher- turn your gaze upon this husk of a woman, and the things that pilot it, and take your fill!”

  
  


A crash was heard, and then the world went white. Screams by their hundred rolled from the bodies of worms and the woman who homed them. 

  
  


They could see nothing but eyes, and then they were gone.

  
  


\--------

  
  


When the assistants woke up, they were in an ambulance, getting checked over for what little worm wounds they had. They didn’t care about their still bleeding legs, more terrified of what had happened. They had been flashbanged- but that did not confuse them as much as what they saw did. 

  
  


Jon was talking patiently to first responders, completely fine, completely normal as if his boy had not become a storm of horror in the room. He looked…. Full? He looked satisfied.

  
  


The Archivist was keeping an eye on his people.

  
  


He was not surprised, when they cornered him the week they got back. The Archivist had been expecting it, the assistants were always curious. The spider that made it’s home in his hollowed out heart spun webs that were not overtaken by anything, but not impeding the lively fear ecosystem that was homed in the body of Jonathan Sims. His blood, clay and mud that made his skin tone just a tinge too wrong. 

  
  


“You are not Jon.” Tim says, his voice ferocious. The Archivist knew that Tim had trouble with strangers inhabiting the skin of who he loved, though Jon was as much Stranger aligned as Tim himself was. He could taste the fear, and he could sense it like the itch of a hunt, his teeth sharp against the flesh of his mouth.

  
  


“What gave it away?” It was a silly question, the Archivist knew, since it was obvious what had clued them in. He had been to quick to bring back his old habits, of spiting those who have hurt him, or more importantly, the woman who scared Martin, “The eyes? The laugh? The lightshow? I’ll admit that was a bit overdramatic.”

  
  


“Give him back.” Tim seethed, looking ready to wrench The Archivist’s skull from his body. Shame that it wouldn’t have worked. The head would reattach, though it would be a disgusting process. Like stitching a dolls head back on but with more blood.

  
  


The Archivist felt guilt, that he had come back to save the world, only to isolate himself for those he wanted to save, “I’m afraid I can’t.” 

  
  


Tim was about to lunge at him, “Why not? You wearing his face just for funsies?”

  
  


“No. You see; Jon never existed.” The Archivist knows this is not completely true, not completely false, but now- now he was the Archivist. No identity could overwrite two worlds colliding, to create a monster of all 14. He bore the burden of a world he ended, and would feed those fears until they saw it fit to let him die.

  
  


Martin scoffed, “That can’t be right-”

  
  


“I am not lying.” The Archivist retorts, a bit more like the man who got all scuffled when Martin teased him about being a twit. The man in the Safehouse and not the monster under the building. “I am the Archivist, he has always been the Archivist. Fate does not play games, and this is the burden that weighed upon the placeholder for the Archivist since he was born.”

  
  


“Shut up- you’re talking like a prophecy book. The chosen one and that nonsense.”

  
  


“I never did like those.” The Archivist said quietly, and then looked sadly at the assistants, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  
  


Tim looked at him, and then came forward and landed a punch on Jon’s chest, and again. It did nothing to the Archivist, it was probably Tim’s fists that would hurt afterwards. He was letting out steam, and the Archivist let him. He needed it anyway, all of them did, after the loss of their friend. Or perceived loss, since the Archivist had a rather bleak outlook on his identity. Maybe that was his smidge of distortion. Was his Madness Incarnate showing, in how he lied to them?

  
  


Did he truly believe he was no longer the poor man who was lead to end the world in its entirety? The idiot led to power that he did not want. The killer of Jonah Magnus. The lover of Martin Blackwood. The pupil of the eye.

  
  


It was better that way, if they hated him.

  
  
  
  
  



End file.
